OK, Sea-Fever has been dark for some time and that’s because in mid-March I started a new job as Managing Director of WaterFire Providence. It’s destiny that a guy with a blog called Sea-Fever goes to work at a place called WaterFire.

If you’ve never experienced WaterFire you’ll probably just get confused if I try to tell you what it is. But I’ll try any way because you should know.

WaterFire Providence is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to inspire Providence and its visitors by revitalizing the urban experience, fostering community engagement and creatively transforming the city by presenting WaterFire for all to enjoy. What’s WaterFire? This video does a better job than any words I could muster.

For a deeper dive on WaterFire, here’s an old video of founder Barnaby Evans explaining the artwork.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

I’ve been very fortunate to have some incredible jobs over the years and the chance to work with some amazing people; however, WaterFire is really a world apart. I’ll be writing about it here from time to time.

This is another great Creative Time project. In case you aren’t familiar with Creative Time, they do site specific art in New York City. Their own words are better:

Creative Time strives to commission, produce and present the most important, ground-breaking, challenging and exceptional art of our times; art that infiltrates the public realm and engages millions of people in New York City and across the globe. We are guided by a passionate belief in the power of art to create inspiring personal experiences as well as foster social progress. We are thrilled when art breaks into the public realm in surprising ways, reaching people beyond traditional limitations of class, age, race and education. Above all, we privilege artists¹ ideas. We get excited about their dreams and respond to them by providing big opportunities to expand their practices and take bold new risks that value process, content and possibilities. We like to make the impossible possible, pushing artists beyond their comfort levels, just as they push us beyond ours. In the process, artists engage in a dynamic conversation between site, audience, and context, offering up new ideas about who an artist is and what art can be, pushing culture into fresh new directions. In the process, our artists¹ temporary interventions into public life promote the democratic use of public space as a place for free and creative expression.

My first experience with a Creative Time project was probably more than 25 years ago when they had an exhibition inside the East caisson of the Brooklyn Bridge called Art in the Anchorage. As with nearly all of their projects the space was as captivating and exciting as the art that filled it. Unfortunately, our times took it’s toll on this incredible series of art shows. From the Creative Time website:

Art in the Anchorage drew thousands of people to the bridge’s majestic vaults, while encouraging artists, musicians, performers, fashion designers, filmmakers, and dancers to create new, groundbreaking works until its closure in 2001 due to national security.

The current show, PLOT/09 This World & Nearer Ones, which is on Governor’s Island this summer and open and free to the public on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays looks very interesting too.

A stone’s throw from the southern tip of Manhattan, Governor’s Island has an incredibly rich maritime history but access always been limited to the general public; so here’s your chance to check out the cool little island with some hot art. If you do go, please send me some pictures and your thoughts about the exhibition and I’ll create another post with your review(s) of it.

Just keep an eye out for the zombies! (Bonus points if you capture any on film)